Business Cards That Point Somewhere Useful

How a card is actually used

It is handed over in a moment when nobody reads it, put in a pocket or a wallet, and found later.

Later may be that evening or it may be eight months afterwards, in a drawer, when somebody needs the service and cannot remember who gave it to them.

At that point the card has one job: getting them to you from what is printed on it.

Which means the design question is not what looks good in the hand, it is what works when found cold with no context.

The four things it needs

• The business name, readable.
• The trade, in plain words.
• One phone number.
• A typeable web address.

The second is the one omitted most often and needed most. A card found in a drawer with a name and no trade tells somebody nothing, and they will not search a name they do not recognise.

The address has to be typeable

Same constraint as any printed material, and it applies to cards particularly.

Somebody typing it is reading from a small piece of card, possibly in poor light, and will not persist through a long or awkward address.

Print the domain without any prefix, since nobody types those, and without a long path.

Where the card is for a specific purpose, a short path is fine and should be one plain word.

Check that the address reads unambiguously in the typeface chosen, since some faces make certain characters look alike at card size.

Codes are useful and not a substitute

Worth being clear about, since they are frequently treated as the answer.

A scannable code linking to your site works, is now familiar to almost everybody, and saves typing.

It also fails where somebody has no camera to hand, is not the sort of person who scans things, or is looking at a photocopy or a scan of the card.

So include one if you like, and never at the expense of the printed details, which is the failure to avoid.

Point it at something specific and useful rather than the home page: a contact page, a booking page, or a saved contact file.

And test the printed card rather than the design file, since codes fail when printed too small, on a dark background, or with insufficient contrast.

A worked example

A business had cards showing the logo, a name, an email address, and a code, with no trade named and no phone number.

The design was clean and the cards looked good.

A customer found one months later, could not remember what the business did, and did not scan the code because they were not sure it was worth it.

The next print added the trade in plain words beneath the name and a phone number, keeping the code.

Calls attributable to cards began appearing, which had not happened before.

The information had always been available through the code, and it had needed to be readable without one.

Use the back

Since a blank back is half the card unused, and one-sided printing saves very little.

Put something on it that makes the card worth keeping: what you cover, the areas you serve, or a short list of services.

A space to write is genuinely useful for trades, since a card annotated with a date or a price is far more likely to be kept.

Some businesses put a small offer or a reference on the back, which gives a reason to retain it.

Keep the front simple and let the back carry the detail, which resolves the tension between clarity and completeness.

Design constraints worth knowing

The practical points a printer will raise, and which are easier to accommodate in advance.

Keep important content away from the edges, since trimming varies slightly and text near the edge can be cut.

Dark backgrounds show every mark and fingerprint, and scuff visibly at the corners.

Small type is harder to read on card than on screen, so specify larger than looks necessary.

And matte finishes can be written on while gloss cannot, which matters if anybody will annotate them.

Ask for a physical proof before a large run, since colour and finish look different in the hand than on any screen.

Print fewer

A practical note, since the cost per card falls sharply with volume and tempts people into large orders.

Details change: a number, an address, a service, sometimes the business name.

A box of a thousand cards printed with an old phone number is a small ongoing embarrassment and a real waste.

Order a few hundred, use them, and reprint when something changes or you run low.

The saving from a larger run is smaller than the cost of the cards you throw away.

Leave them where people find them

The distribution half, which decides whether any of the design matters.

Cards handed to somebody you have just done work for are the ones most likely to be kept, particularly with two given so one can be passed on.

Cards left on counters at businesses you have a relationship with produce a steady trickle for years at no cost.

Cards handed out at events to people who did not ask for one are mostly discarded before anybody gets home.

Which means the useful stock is small and the useful placement is narrow, and it is another reason not to order a thousand of them.

The counter-case

Cards matter less than they did.

Most contact now happens through a phone, and many people will photograph a card or ask you to text them rather than keeping it.

For some trades a card is close to ceremonial, and the same money spent on van signage would produce more.

There is also a version of this where a business agonises over cards while its listing is incomplete, which is the wrong order of priorities entirely.

Print a simple card with the trade named, one number, and a typeable address, order a few hundred, and spend the attention elsewhere.

What to print

1. Name and trade, both readable.
2. One phone number.
3. A short typeable address.
4. A code, optionally, pointing somewhere specific.
5. Use the back for detail or writing space.
6. Ask for a physical proof.
7. Order a few hundred, not a thousand.

Step one is the omission that renders a card useless, since somebody who cannot tell what you do will not search a name they do not recognise.

How printed material reaches your site is covered in print, radio and the website they reach.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.